PHILIPPINES
Workers plunge to death
A service elevator with construction workers plunged 25 floors at a building site in Metro Manila yesterday, killing 10, officials said. The workers were installing glass windows on a high-rise condominium under construction when the platform gave way, sending them tumbling down from the 32nd to the seventh floor, Makati Mayor Junjun Binay said. He said that one worker was in critical condition. Police chief Froilan Bonifacio said the deaths were a result of a “freak accident.”
CHINA
Official gets tough sentence
A former top court official in southwestern China has received a suspended death sentence on graft charges, state media said on Wednesday. Zhang Tao (張濤), former vice president of the high court in the city of Chongqing, was convicted of accepting bribes and sheltering criminal gangs over a 10-year period, the official Xinhua news agency said. He was “sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve” by a court in the neighboring province of Guizhou, it said. Such rulings are typically commuted to life in prison. Zhang is one of the highest-ranking officials ensnared in the crackdown, which gripped the nation with revelations of a thriving underworld in Chongqing led by mob bosses who acted with impunity under the protection of corrupt officials.
NEW ZEALAND
Surgery may delay ‘Hobbit’
Filming of the widely anticipated Hobbit movies will be delayed because director Peter Jackson is recovering from surgery for a perforated ulcer, a spokeswoman said yesterday. Jackson, who directed the hit Lord of the Rings film trilogy, was admitted to a hospital in Wellington on Wednesday with acute stomach pains. “Sir Peter is currently resting comfortably and his doctors expect him to make a full recovery,” spokeswoman Melissa Booth said. “The surgery is not expected to impact on his directing commitment to the Hobbit beyond a slight delay to the start of filming.”
CHINA
Fugitive a Web sensation
A microblog purportedly set up by a longtime fugitive attracted more than 10,000 followers within hours before it was shut down, state media reported yesterday. A Sina.com microblog in the name of Lai Changxing (賴昌星), a property investor who is accused of smuggling goods worth billions of dollars into China was set up early on Wednesday, the Global Times newspaper reported. “In Vancouver” was the only posting on the microblog before the account — marked with a “V” sign to indicate its user’s identity was authentic — was shut down by noon, the report said. However, within seven hours it had already attracted 13,000 followers, the report said. Lai fled to Canada after he was accused of smuggling US$8 billion-worth of oil, cars and cigarettes into the city of Xiamen, the report said. No extradition treaty exists between China and Canada, the report said.
NEW ZEALAND
Missing cat returns ‘fixed’
A valuable pedigree cat that went missing from its home turned up two days later a little different — it had been surgically castrated. Owner Michelle Curtis said she was furious when her Siamese-Bengal cross came home “fixed.” “I couldn’t believe someone took my cat and got him fixed. I don’t know why they would do that,” Curtis told Bay of Plenty Times newspaper. Curtis said she had been considering using him as a stud cat. “What am I supposed to do now? I can’t exactly get someone to sew them back on,” she said.
GERMANY
Oven builders memorialized
A memorial site and educational center to open in Erfurt this week on International Holocaust Remembrance Day documents the role played by a maker of crematoria in the mass execution of Europe’s Jews and others. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s top men dreamed up the horrors of the Holocaust, but without the support of engineers and industrialists like Topf & Sons, they would never have succeeded in murdering millions. Through technology developed and products built in the Topf & Sons factories, Auschwitz was equipped with four crematoria that resembled factories where as many as 8,000 corpses could be burned in a day. The new memorial site uses original documents and artifacts to show the production of the Auschwitz ovens. The exhibit was to open yesterday.
SYRIA
Dam to be built on border
Damascus and Ankara will lay the foundation stone of a dam on their common border on Feb. 6, Turkey’s Ambassador to Syria Omer Onhon said. The two Mediterranean neighbors are discussing details of tenders and financing for the dam on the Orontes River, Onhon said in an interview in Damascus. Technical committees from the two countries will decide whether the dam will be built by Ankara or Damascus, or by both countries, he said. The two countries are engaged in negotiations over water-sharing issues and are building gas pipelines.
SOUTH AFRICA
Mandela in hospital
The African National Congress (ANC) called for calm yesterday after former president Nelson Mandela was admitted to hospital for what his foundation described as “routine tests.” ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu urged “South Africans ... not [to] press any panic buttons, as there is no reason for that whatsoever.” The foundation said in a statement that the 92-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner was in Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg for routine tests, but that his health was not in jeopardy. The Star newspaper reported yesterday that Mandela had been seen by a lung specialist, Michael Plit. The doctor declined to comment on Mandela’s condition.
UNITED KINGDOM
Art seeds up for auction
Anyone who missed the chance to romp among the handpainted ceramic sunflower seeds created by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未) at the Tate Modern in London will soon get an opportunity to do so in their own homes — at a cost of up to £120,000 (US$191,000). A sackful of the seeds will be sold at a Sotheby’s auction of contemporary art next month. A single seed claimed to be from the exhibit appeared last autumn on eBay — presumably pilfered from an earlier showing of the work — and eventually sold for £28. That would make the 100kg of seeds being offered at Sotheby’s a bargain.
UNITED KINGDOM
Charles a ‘pommie bastard’
Prince Charles fondly recalled how he was called a “pommie bastard” while a student in Australia before offering his support to the flood-ravaged nation at a dinner in London on Wednesday. The heir to the throne told guests at an event to mark Australia Day that the good-natured abuse he received during a six-month spell at Timbertop, Victoria, in 1966, made him a stronger person. “I’ve been through my fair share of being called a ‘pommie bastard,’ by God it was good for the character,” the prince said during the celebration at the Australian High Commission in London. “If you want to develop character, go to Australia.”
MEXICO
Smugglers take pot shots
Drug smugglers trying to get marijuana across the Arizona-Mexico border are apparently trying a new approach — a catapult. National Guard troops operating a remote video surveillance system at the Naco Border Patrol Station say they observed several people preparing a catapult and launching packages over the International Border fence on Friday evening last week. Tucson TV station KVOA said Border Patrol agents working with the National Guard contacted Mexican authorities, who went to the location and disrupted the catapult operation. The 3m-tall catapult was found about 20m from the US border on a flatbed towed by a sports utility vehicle, according to a Mexican army officer with the 45th military zone in the border state of Sonora. The catapult was capable of launching 2kg of marijuana at a time, the officer said.
UNITED STATES
Cases of pre-diabetes rocket
About one in three adults have so-called pre-diabetes, a 39 percent jump over 2008 estimates, the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a report. The condition signals higher-than-normal blood sugar, and it can lead to diabetes, heart attack and stroke. Pre-diabetes now affects about 79 million people, the CDC said. Almost 26 million Americans have diabetes, though about 7 million are undiagnosed, the Atlanta-based agency said. Half of Americans aged 65 and older have pre-diabetes and more than a quarter are diabetic, the CDC said. The higher estimate was determined using a new method for testing blood sugar levels, which may capture more people, the agency said.
UNITED STATES
Chinese man fined, jailed
A Chinese business executive has been sentenced in Massachusetts to more than eight years in federal prison for conspiring to export sensitive military products to military agencies in China. Alex Wu (吳振洲) was also ordered on Wednesday to pay a fine of US$15,000, a special assessment of US$1,700 and to forfeit US$65,881. Federal prosecutors say Zhen traveled to the US every year using business visas as an owner of Chitron Electronics Inc of Waltham, Massachusetts. The 46-year-old used the company to procure military electronics components, sensitive electronics used in military phased array radar, electronic warfare and missile systems.
UNITED STATES
Missionary fatally wounded
A woman described by police as a missionary has died at a Texas hospital after her husband brought her mortally wounded over a Rio Grande bridge from Mexico. Police in Pharr, Texas, say Nancy Davis’ husband told investigators that she had been shot in the head by gunmen in a pickup truck as the couple traveled about 112km south of the Mexican border city of Reynosa. Pharr police said the 59-year-old died about 90 minutes after her husband drove the couple’s truck against traffic across the Pharr International Bridge.
MEXICO
Rebels mourn mediator
Leftist Zapatista rebels have expressed their condolences over the death of retired Bishop Samuel Ruiz, who served as a mediator in peace talks between the Mexican government and the guerrillas. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation praised Ruiz for his “fight for peace with justice and dignity for Indians.” Ruiz died on Monday of complications from diabetes at the age of 86. A brief armed uprising by the Zapatistas in 1994 ended in an uneasy truce.
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees